Support Services
Family Preservation
The Family Preservation program provides intensive support to families whose children are at risk of out of home care placement. Family Preservation offers families support and skills development to enable their child or children to remain at home. In some circumstances, where a return home for child or young person is being considered, Family Preservation works with families to achieve this goal.
The Department of Human Services (DHS) Protective Services are the only point of access to this service.
Staff are available to families 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for a period of up to 10 weeks. The worker can be available to work with a family up to 20 hours per week. The families are seen in their own homes and neighbourhood at convenient times. Staff are based at Hargreaves Street, Bendigo.
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Family Services
Family Services provides support to families who have dependant children aged 0 to 18. The focus is on early intervention and prevention. Services range from information and advice through to intensive support and group work. The program delivers comprehensive and flexible supports that respond to family need.
Services range from high intensity to short and medium-term assistance. Family Services is also capable of providing longer term assistance where support needs are ongoing.
Families can refer themselves or other agencies including DHS Child Protection may refer them. The service is voluntary even though at times DHS Child Protection Services may be involved with the family. Family services are offered from Bendigo, Maryborough, and Swan Hill. The Swan Hill and Maryborough services also include a centralised intake and response service.
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Child FIRST
Child FIRST provides a central, community-based referral point to a range of community based family services and other supports for vulnerable children and families within Victoria. This enables families to access the services and supports they need, at the time they need them, to build the capacity of families to support their children’s healthy development.
Child FIRST team was established to coordinate intake services for all DHS Family Services funded programs in the southern Loddon Mallee region. These services have formed a partnership called the North Central Child & Family Services Alliance. Members of the NCC&FS Alliance include:
- Bendigo and District Aboriginal Cooperative (BDAC)
- Bendigo Community Health Services
- Castlemaine District Community Health Centre
- CentaCare – Diocese of Sandhurst
- Cobaw Community Health Services
- Echuca Regional Health
- Kyabram Community and Learning Centre
- Njernda Aboriginal Corporation and
- St Luke’s Anglicare Victoria.
Child FIRST can be accessed by families and professionals alike.
Phone: 1800 260 338 or 54401147 (service providers)
Email: childfirst@stlukes.org.au
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Parenting Assessment and Skills Development Service (PASDS)
The Parenting Assessment & Skills Development Service that sits within the Family Services
in St Lukes is part of a State-wide service provision responding to the High Risk Infant
Program in Child Protection at the Department of Human Services. It allows for timely,
flexible work with families where an infant from birth to the age of 2 years is at risk of
harm and/ or neglect.
The program aims to build up on the parenting strengths of the primary carer so that the
infant is no longer deemed to be at high risk. Work with families is intense and can take
place in our residential unit or in the family home. After the initial phase of determining
strengths, capacity to increase parenting skills and further family needs a second phase
may be entered into where a Parenting Skills Development Program tailored to the family’s
specific needs is undertaken. This too is intense and can last up to a three months period.
During this time we aim to wrap the community in which the family lives around them, linking
in services that can be sustaining, ongoing and supportive.
The service covers the Loddon Mallee Region and is staffed by a team leader with early
childhood education qualifications, a senior worker with early childhood and social work
qualifications and Parenting Skills Development workers in Bendigo, Swan Hill and Mildura
with social worker qualifications and specialist knowledge in child development. Residential
workers are employed during the initial phase when families stay in residence. Expert
advice is sought from Maternal & Child Health Nurses, paediatricians, psychologists, mental
health workers, drug & alcohol workers or other disciplines where necessary to gain a
comprehensive understanding of the family needs.
Referrals to our service are made exclusively through the High Risk Infant Unit in Child
Protection at the Department of Human Services in Bendigo and our reports go to the family
and the protective worker who made the referral.
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Refugee Program - Bendigo
A St. Luke’s part–time worker provides short-term trauma and torture counselling for a group of Karen refugees from Burma who are settling in Bendigo. Counselling and advocacy can assist the journey towards healing. The program is a component of the Australian Government’s Integrated Humanitarian Settlement Strategy. The role also involves raising awareness of the refugee experience amongst other service providers and organising training, resources and support.
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Youth Connection Team
The Youth Connection Team (YCT) is an early intervention program. It works intensively with young people and their families to assist them at a time when youth homelessness and family disconnection may otherwise be the result.
It has four service components:
- Reconnect
- Family mediation,
- 15 -16 year old response service and
- Finding Solutions.
Reconnect is a federally funded program that addresses youth homelessness and family breakdown. It is an early intervention program that works with young people aged between 12 and 15 who are at risk of leaving school and experiencing family difficulties. Reconnect workers are linked to four secondary schools: Eaglehawk, Maryborough, Castlemaine, and Weeroona. The service also provides third party assessments for Centrelink when a young person is applying for the ‘Unreasonable to live at home’ youth allowance.
Family mediation is a conflict resolution and reconciliation program offered to young people and their families within the City of Greater Bendigo. It provides a process for resolving conflicts and making agreements about issues which concern both the young person and his or her family. The service is provided by YCT staff.
15-16 year-old Early Intervention Service works with young people and their families from the Bendigo area with a focus on family reconciliation and reconnection. The target group is 15 and 16 year-old first time home leavers and their families who require support in working through family conflict/reconnection issues. Family mediation and conflict resolution are available as part of this support.
Finding Solutions is a service directed at reducing the number of young people coming into out of home care. It has a particular focus on working with young people aged 13 to 15 and their families where there is a serious risk of the young person being placed out of home. Referrals to the program are through the DHS Protective Team.
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Connect Central (Youth Transition Support Initiative)
Connect Central creates a collaborative and coordinated approach to meeting the education, training and employment needs of “at risk” young people aged 15 to 19. The service operates within the three local government areas of the City of Greater Bendigo and the Central Goldfields and Mt. Alexander Shires. Connect Central is funded through the Department of Education.
Connect Central was established by a consortium including Bendigo Regional Institute of TAFE , Net School/Bendigo Senior Secondary College, St Luke’s, Bendigo Community Health, Continuing Education, Catholic College Bendigo, Castlemaine Secondary College, and Maryborough Education Centre.
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Youth Supported Accommodation and Assistance Program (SAAP)
The Youth SAAP service provides accommodation and support to young people age 15 to 19 who are homeless or at risk of being homeless. The service provides a range of accommodation options include board providers/carers, live in carer houses, emergency accommodation and access to transitional housing for young people in the Bendigo area. The Youth SAAP team comprises a coordinator and four youth housing workers.
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Youth Resource Team
The Youth Resource Team provides a range of vocational, educational and personal development programs for young people accessing St Luke’s Youth Services. The primary target for these programs is young people on protective orders who are clients of St Luke's Out of Home Care Services and/or the ICMS program. The team is also able to provide programs for young people from other services.
Programs include:
- The Good Shed (carpentry and bicycle repairs)
- BuSy (Work experience/employer mentoring program)
- adventure/recreation program
- Real to Reel hip hop music program
- Smart Art program (art and craft program for young women)
- Chutzpah Youth Enterprise program
- Adds Up (deemed enrolment scheme and tutoring service)
- Drama Works (drama program).
The Real to Reel music program also includes an Aboriginal music program for Koori young people in Bendigo and Echuca. Real to Reel, Smart Art and the Chutzpah programs are also available to young people accessing services and supports outside St Luke’s.
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Leaving Care and After Care Support program
This program provides leaving and after care support to young people who have been in care. The target group is 16 to 18 year-olds who have limited housing and support options. The program can provide support to these young people until their early adult years.
The main components of the service are:
- case management and support
- links to housing
- transition units for independent living
- living skills education
- links to education and training
- family support and practical support.
In partnership with Whitelion, young people are also linked with mentors in the community. Requests for service for the program come from the case managers of the young people, mainly from St Luke’s Out-of-Home Care Program, Intensive Case Management Service, or the Adolescent Protective Team at DHS.
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The Loddon Mallee Youth Mentoring Co-ordination Project
The Youth Mentoring Co-ordination Project provides information, support, training and resources to new and existing youth mentoring programs.
The project promotes youth mentoring across the region by:
- strengthening local community capacity to develop successful and sustainable mentoring programs
- identifying and sharing best practice mentoring models with local communities and throughout the region
- supporting and co-ordinating new and existing mentoring programs in the region.
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Preschool field workers
Preschool field workers work closely with early childhood staff and families to support children with additional needs in state funded preschool groups. Workers spend time with children at preschool and at home observing and assessing their strengths and needs. They also assist early childhood staff to plan and develop positive learning experiences for individual children. Workers provide support and information for families of children with additional needs. Workers are based at Echuca, Bendigo and Kyneton.
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Inclusion in Kindergarten Services (ISK)
ISK offers supplementary assistance to preschools to support initiatives for the inclusion of children with severe disabilities in the preschool program. We have around 19 staff who work one-on-one with children with disabilities in preschools from Woodend to Echuca and from Maryborough to Heathcote. Workers spend an average of 10 hours per week with each child.
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1 3 6
The 136 project focuses on the health, growth and development of children aged 0 to 6 with the understanding that everyone in or around a child’s life needs to participate in this process.
136 is an old red brick house, which includes a large secure play area that children and their parents can use for a range of child focused activities. It offers a venue for supervised contacts between children in Out of Home Care and their parents. The child friendly environment provides families with privacy or similar opportunities to further develop parenting skills and enhance learning that would be available to them in their own home.
The environment and resources at 136 enable parents and carers to learn new skills in their role as primary caregivers. The Caregiver Resource Room provides support and resources for caregivers caring for children in out of home care.
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